Following up on the news a couple of weeks ago that Microsoft had killed the Kin, its first Windows Phone 7 device, after only a month on the market, we found a list of ten gadgets that, despite their promise, didn't make it in the marketplace. Some of these devices, such as the Modo, laid the groundwork for blockbuster products (iPod). Some, like the Audrey, developed a cult following once their failure made them affordable on eBay. Others just flat out failed (DataPlay). Are there any short-lived gadgets that didn't make the list? What about the CueCat?

Seems the mobile version of the site doesn't make the article visible, but one old one and a new one come to mind, and both are philosophically tied:

BeIA (Sony eVilla, did they even do any name research for english-speaking countries?) and it's more recent reincarnation, also with poor naming (though names can be ignored if something works well):

The Joo Joo
I owner how many eVillas were sold, as well as how many Joo Joos? Both purport to solve the same problem, and both were too expensive for their functionality being dedicated, and neither has done well at their claimed tasks.

However, had BeIA be more along the line of what we now know as "netbook", its fate (and that of Be) might have been quite different.

Interestingly, BeIA being flash memory based (16 or 32 MB) could have been the "instant-on" internet gateway to the remote human interaction channels (e-mail, blog, FaceBook, Twitter) while allowing the more capable and versatile BeOS taking on the other stuff one does once in a while. There was a short blip about a Linux "instant-on" personality with a deeper Windows (or fuller Linux) personality a few weeks ago here in relation to HP becoming a "Linux Distributor".

However, had BeIA be more along the line of what we now know as "netbook", its fate (and that of Be) might have been quite different.

BeIA was BeOS under the hood, By that I mean, you could quit the custom version of Opera 4 (aka Wagner) and it would boot to Tracker. It was fairly crippled for other reasons, but it *was* BeOS on a 32MB card (IIRC 32MB was the max image size the tools could create.)

Interestingly, BeIA being flash memory based (16 or 32 MB) could have been the "instant-on" internet gateway to the remote human interaction channels (e-mail, blog, FaceBook, Twitter)

I believe that was the ongoing "plan". However, BeIA was far from instant on. It took around a minute to boot from CF (I only ever had a unit with Compact Flash and a rig that booted from an IDE drive.) Caveat: Most of the versions I saw were BeIA 1.0 or prior, so 2.0 might have been better.